Invisible Listening

I came across an interesting study from Coleman Insights that was presented at the National Association of Broadcasters Radio Show last week.

The study makes the distinction between intentional radio listening and incidental, or invisible, radio listening. From the study press release:

Coleman Insights defines Intentional listening as when people are aware of a station and intend to listen to it. Incidental listening is to stations that people are aware of and have some sense of, but that is driven by other forces that are generally out of their control (such as someone being exposed to a station played in an office environment). Invisible listening is completely unexplained listening that the PPM captures, but that the listeners have no recollection of. The findings demonstrate that there is very little a radio station can do to impact the amount of Incidental and Invisible listening it generates in PPM.

Unsurprisingly, the study authors encourage radio stations to focus on intentional listening.

Compare radio listening to listening to ad-supported downloaded music on a portable player. One thing you can be pretty sure of is that listening to music on an MP3 player is intentional. This enables high engagement, high CPM advertising.